A topical report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCooper advise that in the first six months of 2009, online marketing became the main advertising style in the UK, overtaking TV marketing for the first time. In this time frame, Online Marketing grew by 4.6%. During the same period, the total sum of money spent on advertising overall was down 16.6%. Online marketing now has 23.5% of the market share whereas TV has 21.9%, down 17% from the same period last year.

The current credit crunch is seen as a major factor in speeding up a procedure which was in fact expected by the end of 2009 in which online advertising gained the number 1 spot in the UK. The UK is currently the world leader of online marketing. Users of the online services are increasing as the price of broadband is becoming more affordable and more households have faster broadband connections. Of these households, more than half are wireless connections, making usability much simpler. In these days of doubt, therefore, it is no shock that advertisers are following this market which is more targetable, assessable and accountable than other media types.

Advertisers have to be more sensitive in this current climate of where their budget is spent and with Sky+ in many homes, people are tending to skip adverts as they playback their preferred television programmes. This may possibly account for the decision of many to put their reduced budget on Search Engine Placement positioning for example, as opposed to the conventional TV advertising.

Thinkbox marketing director, Lindsey Clay, is of the view that now that online marketing is more mature market, email advertising, classified advertising, display advertising and search advertising should be classed as separate entities, instead of all being linked under the one umbrella of online advertising.

Of all the money spent on marketing online in the first half of 2009, over 60% went on paid for search advertising. This is very popular due to the fact that these adverts can aim at exactly the right consumers for the advertisers’ services. Most internet users are also regular users of search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, so it should be no surprise to us that organisations are selecting to spend their marketing budget on search advertising.

TV advertising has not gone completely and as discussions are underway regarding marketing within TV programmes, known as product placement, this may well develop the TV advertising market again. However, now that online marketing has become established, and as advertisers see positive results, this is a market for the SEO company and it is definitely worth investing.